The Girl, The Woman
by Sorrow Personified
Summary: (Lolita) "If only I could kiss that mouth and feel her melt away, my Ice Princess no longer, and watch her frolic in pink-checked gingham. If only she shivered, as though she was chaste again, under my hands."


She wears lipstick now; she never did before. Her hair is permed and curled and falls neatly and coquettishly to her shoulders that were once much more narrow. Her skin is garnished with pimples and cheap cosmetics instead of the bright-eyed flush and blackberry stains around the two rosy-pink petals of her mouth. And I thought her fingers stained yellow – at first I thought that she was smoking, and I clasped her in a furious, catty, scorching embrace, kissing her lipsticked mouth, tasting not the nasal, throaty scent of nicotine, only the (More innocent? Less innocent? I do not know any more.) lipstick smears on her teeth. She is taller now, and no longer bears the androgyny that is common to all nymphets. Her shoe-heels have gradually heightened – she comes up to my ears now with her preferred fashion. Her eyes, those dreamy, languorous, pale orbs in her now undoubtedly _teenage _face, look out at me with cynicism (Feigned? Unfeigned? Who am I to say?) and sometimes such fury, such indescribable _hate_ that Humbert is forced to fall on his two unworthy knees, his two scarred and bloody knees. He is forced to crawl to his Queen, his concubine, his addiction, his _Lolita_, and he is forced to kiss her feet – unworthy, oh, so unworthy, too unworthy to look into his lover's, his darling's, his daughter's face. And all the while I hear her cackle over my head like the child-witch she is. I, yes, I, the insect that I am, sometimes hate my Lo. Sometimes I want to slap her rouged cheekbones and tear bloodened clumps of polished hair from her aloof and maddening head… smack her bony wrist and bite her mouth as though it were a ripe fruit in one of our pseudo-passionate kisses. Oh, Lolita, don't look at me like that!

Ah, my darling, my love, my beautiful one – yes, you are still beautiful – I am addicted to you! (Oh, Lola, don't look at me like that…) I am like the unhappy Parisian artist who frequents the opium den and swills absinthe as though it were water! (Don't look at me at all, oh my Lolita…) I want you to love me, Lo. Love me, Lo, Lola, Dolly, Dolores, _Lolita_, just love me! I know you could never love me as a lover - I have not been good enough to you. Or a father – I am no father to you. As a friend – never. But you seem not to see me as a human, Lola! (If you looked at me, I fear that I might die.) Am a not a human to you? Not a very good one, I suppose, being the monster that I am – but do you see me just as a robotic paedophile, preying on you, my little concubine, with promises of presents and trips and new clothes? Am I that and that alone? Can you see me at all?  


When she looks at me with that mocking languor in her clouded eyes (Strangely shuttered as of late) I am torn between Heaven and Hell – I love her, how could I not? She is the universal nymphet. But I hate her, too – she is the cat, the lazy and fine-coarse feline who lolls in the sun on the cement window ledge, batting, if you please, a piece of cheese between its polished-red, manicured, claws while the mouse on the ground emaciates and slavers, and when his throat wears itself away while his squeaking pleas disappear, she gulps the morsel down for herself.

Her eyes glaze over when they spy some crooner-turned-actor, when a melancholy love song comes over on the car radio, even for something as trivial as a fudge sundae, but when she looks at me harsh, cold, grey-tinted reality juts into those dreamy eyes, and that involuntary soft smile freezes on her brown face, and she sometimes even lets the two pink triangled corners drop altogether. Why, my Dolly? Can't I even enjoy such innocent pleasures as these any more?

If only I could kiss that mouth and feel her melt away, my Ice Princess no longer, and watch her frolic in pink-checked gingham. If only she shivered, as though she was chaste again, under my hands. But how could she? I am the deformed Hunchback, the crippled leper, whose hands are full of ants and maggots and such horrors… I fear that I have lost Lo.

And I am terrified that I never had my Lolita.


End file.
